"This is quite possibly the most difficult morph we've had to up with," Cassie complained as we gathered in her barn.

It was right after we'd gone to Erek's, and, like always, we were stuck with the age-old question: what morph were we gonna use today? Actually, whatever morph we decided upon, we wouldn't do anything that particular day. It was like 8:00, and if even if we came up with an answer to that stupid age-old question, we wouldn't have anywhere close to enough time to do anything. In fact, since the next day I would have to meet Sandy at the airport, and the next weekend was Rachel's mom's birthday, it would be a couple of weeks before we did anything mission-like. Anyway, back to the story:

"I mean, if we just had to tunnel through dirt, we could use our mole-morphs. But this is a mountain. As in rock. And I don't know any animal that can do that."

"There has to be cracks and stuff in this mountain," I suggested. "Things flies and cockroaches could get through."

Rachel acted shocked. "What?! Marco, of all people, suggesting we go bug? I never thought I'd hear the day!"

<Any cracks in the mountain would be cut off from the fortress. The Yeerks know that we have insect morphs. They would be prepared.> Ax the Pessimist said, totally destroying my theory in about five seconds.

"What about rivers? Maybe there're rivers going into the mountain." This was Jake.

"You mean like an underwater cave?" Cassie asked. "You're saying that the Yeerks would be as careless as to let an underground river into the fortress without a Gleet Biofilter or whatever and that we could conveniently swim through in a fish morph? Is this what you're saying?"

<Sounds more creative than the old "go through some crack" routine,> Tobias interjected.

I glared at him up in the rafters, though that was pointless. Tobias can out-glare anyone. <Whatever we decide to do, I'll need to check out this little mountain operation from a bird's-eye-view. There'll probably be guards and helicopters surveying the area. I'll work on it tomorrow and I'll give you the scoop whenever.>

"Okay," Rachel said. "but what if there isn't any rivers or cracks or anything useful? Then we'll be at dead-end city."

"Maybe there would be vents at a certain point in the mountain," I said suddenly, with a good idea. "I mean, they would need air in that place, or a place where some kind of machine which supplies that air goes through."

"Hmm," Cassie said. "that makes sense."

"Well, anyway, we can't make any assumptions about how to get in until Tobias takes a look." Said Jake, and that was that.

"MARKY!" Sandra cried, running toward me. I groaned. "Marky" is this nickname Sanny thought up when she was six. I loathe it.

"Saannndddrrraaa," I whined. "I thought we made an agreement for you not to call me that."

Sandra giggled. "Whoops. Sorry. Can't help myself."

I sighed. It was weird, actually. I mean, I wanted to like her better. She's nice and funny and helpful and totally cool. (Except for the actions above. That was sort of odd. I guess long trips do different things to different people.) It's just that she's just so darn perfect it scares me.

We were at the airport, Sunday afternoon. Sandy wasn't jetlagged, which I had expected. My aunt and uncle certainly were. It's a long trip, there to here. Sandra was hugging me now, in public. Public. I was not in the best of moods. I would have been better (SandGirl moving here wasn't nearly as bad as I had let on with Jake), except I had had a really bad dream that night. I don't remember most of it, but it was something about Visser Three cooking me in a frying pan as a fish. Ugh. Anyway, there we were, Sandra, my dad, my aunt and uncle, and me, at the airport.

Sandra looked like a slightly shorter, brunette, brown-eyed version of Rachel, looking like a model in a collection of clothes you could auction for a million bucks at a Gucci convention. My aunt and uncle talked and hugged me a bit, then started going over some stuff with my dad. Dad did the same with Sandra.

"How are you doing?" I asked Sandy, as we sat on some benches in the waiting room.

"Fine. You?"

"Same as always." (Lying to her that way didn't exactly make me feel great.)

"Listen, I'd like to meet some of your friends some time. You know, so I won't have to start my social life from scratch."

"'Kay." "Who are your friends? Besides Jake I mean."

"Well, there's Rachel, Jake's cousin, Cassie, Rachel's best friend and Tobias."

"Alright."

"Okay."

"All rightey then."

"Go on."

"What?"

"Make a joke, duh. This total lack of humor on your part is freakin' me out."

"Sorry, but the Humor Convention is at intermission at the moment. Please come back again later." (Sandra laughed. Don't ask me why. It was not even slightly good. I know this sounds shocking, but I wasn't in the mood.)

"You were frightening me there for a moment. I thought you were abducted by the body snatchers. Come on, the parental units are ready to go. We're going to show you our new house, then you go home and we stay home. You'll see me again at school tomorrow."

"The horror!"

"Oh, grow up, you weenie."

Yes! Yes! Finally I get another chapter! Jeka and Rebbie have been hogging all the chapters, but it's finally my turn again! Yes! (That sounded dorky, didn't it?) Okay, the day is Monday. My parents offered me a chance to skip a few days of school, 'cause of the move and everything, but I denied. No, I'm not crazy, not an idiot. I just like school. (Keep reading the last three sentences over and over again. Maybe you'll get through them once without fainting. After some practice.) I was all set and ready to go.

I had on a fantastic outfit on (if you're reading this aloud for whatever reason, inhale deeply): clunky black ankle boots, long silk purple bell bottoms with a floral design, a simple purple T-shirt under an over-sized fancy embroidered black vest, a black beret over a French braid, big dangly plastic daffodil earrings, sunglasses and a metal peace-sign necklace. What do you think? A little hippie, a little beatnik, a little 90s. Cool. What was not so cool was that nobody, except for Marco, would know me at that school.

I would be alone. A loner. Lone Ranger. Lone Wolfe. I would hate being a loner, however so briefly, I was sure of that. I had a crowd of friends in New York. Not anymore. I sighed. I then met Marco outside my house. My unfamiliar, stuffed-with-boxes, ugly, off-white house. I put on a happy face and tried to act cheery so Marco wouldn't get all concerned. He would help me find all my classes and my new locker and at each class I'd get my customary stack of books.

I didn't want him to act all big-cousiny on me. I didn't need that. I didn't want that. So I acted cool and made dumb jokes about Marco's awful haircut and grinned and laughed at his dumb jokes about how I should quit school and start modeling at a company called 2-Many-Accessories, even though I thought I was wearing the perfect amount. I then went to his school. The school where I met the Vice-Principal. The Vice-Principal I will never, ever forget. Chapman. Hedrick Chapman.

It was during third period (math), when I was called to Chapman's office. I didn't think much of it. I was new, and the events that would take place had yet to come. The events that would make me shiver in the halls at the sound of his name. I wasn't worried: just some Vice-Principal welcoming some new kid to his school. Nothing to worry about. Nothing at all. So I casually walked down to his office (after some asking for directions) and waltzed into his room. I had seen him earlier that day, just before the bell for homeroom rang. He was tall and thin and almost bald.

"Hello, Sandra," Chapman greeted me as I said hello and sat in a chair. "I see that this your first day. I'm Mr. Chapman. Vice-Principal."

Duh, I wanted to say. Marco had already told me. "Hi."

He started talking about my outstanding records, etc., etc., while I tried not to fall asleep. I'd heard the same remarks by so many teachers before, I was getting sick of it. Sick of being complemented. Odd, I know. Then he started talking about some dumb organization, The Sharing. At first I just pretended to pay attention. With karate practice, clothes shopping, socializing, reading, doing homework, my acting classes, my art classes, and my screen play (hee hee hee), I didn't exactly have a ton of time to play Girl Scout, too. Then, for some strange reason, I tuned in more. Don't ask me why. I started to pay more attention to what he was saying.

It was like instinct. I started listening to individual words. Like what we're supposed to do in acting class. Then I realized: he was acting. It was all an act. I could feel it. It sounded so genuine, and yet so fake. Weird. Why would he lie about his own organization? He'd emphysized on how educational and fun it was. He'd say I should join. It was strange, how I could tell that he was faking it. At the time I thought it was my acting. My training in the art, enabling me to tell when someone was acting in real life. Later I would find out otherwise, but not just then.

I said I would maybe check it out. The Sharing, I mean. Chapman seemed pleased. When I walked out of that office, I was shaking. Sweating. I had made up my mind: The Sharing was not your basic club. Chapman not your basic Vice-Principal. Neither was good.

On Monday afternoon I met Sandra, Marco's cousin. She was really nice, and the fashion sense! Wow! She knew how to dress. I didn't see what Marco was complaining about. She seemed fine. On Tuesday night, Tobias came over and told me that he had found a stream that led into the mountain. I then called the others. We didn't have any time to check it out, though. Too much homework, family things, etc. We had to wait two weeks before we did anything. Two weeks! I never knew a time when we had to wait that long for a mission. Later we found out that the two weeks was nessessary. That if we had done it a day earlier we would have missed the girl from the other dimension, the girl who looks likes the girl from the other dimension, and the girl from another planet.

So all that time we used doing normal stuff, impatiently waiting for the mission (Actually, that was me. You can ask Marco his perspective on the matter.) we were actually completely in sinc with our three future gal-pals.

<Okay, we have waited two weeks for this stupid mission to start,> I commented. <so let's get it started already.>

<Actually, I was enjoying the total lack of action,> Marco muttered

<You would->

<I cannot believe you guys! Here we are, a thousand feet in the air, drifting on the thermals, and you people are complaining.> That was Cassie.

Right then we were floating on the thermals, like Cassie had said, because we were looking for that stream Tobias had found. Ax was down below looking for it, too. The problem was that this stream was extremely thin and small and shallow, and the foliage was very thick, and this stream was practically in the middle of nowhere, a few miles from where we usually traveled in the forest. That was why we had Ax down there, who we could easily see, leading us to where we needed to go.

<Found it,> Ax said calmly.

<Okay, Hawks, Eagles, and Falcons, lets dive,> Tobias advised.

I spilled some air from my bald eagle wings and gracefully swooped down on the forest floor. Tobias, Ax, and Jake were already there, and Cassie and Marco landed beside me. We quickly demorphed and took a skeptical look at the extremely tiny stream.

"Jeez," Marco commented, shaking his head pitifully. "We have to swim through that? Somehow I get the feeling that swimming through an empty toothpaste tube would be more comfortable."

"Of course since you're so small, Marco, swimming down in your human body would be like taking a tour through the Taj Mahal." That was me, of course.

"Oh, hardy har-har, Xena. You must so depend on your awsome size that my total lack of that element shocks you so that you must make jokes of at every turn."

"Helllooo," Jake said, obviously annoyed. "The sooner we get through with tag-team teasing, the sooner we get on this mission. Ring a bell, Rachel?"

"Oh yeah. C'mon fellow Animorphs, we must do our duty. We must get started." Marco groaned.

Jake took over. "Okay. Now, first things first. We need to get Tobias and Ax some fish morphs-"

<Done,> Tobias interjected.

"Huh?"

<You'd be amazed at what you could do in two weeks.>

"Ooookkkay," he began again. "I guess we start morphing, huh.? See where this teeny little stream goes."

We began morphing. Don't get me wrong. Some morphs are not that bad. Human to dog is not horrible. Human to gorilla is not horrible. Human to squirrel isn't horrible. You still have your four basic limbs, with all the usual organs, such as eyes and ears and a mouth and a nose and all those really important organs inside of you. Fish morph is not like that. Growing fur or even feathers is not terribly disgusting. Growing scales is.

Your skin hardens where the scales are eventually going to be. The rest of your skin becomes slippery and slimy and silver. You still have your eyes, but they bulge out and become huge compared with the rest of your face, which melts together and shrinks. Ick. Of course you lose your legs, too, and it's only fair that you fall into the stream and drench your new pair of tights. All in all, I don't rank morphing a fish up there with morphing a wolf or a cat.

<Everybody ready?> Jake asked as soon as we were ready. Tobias and Ax's fish morph was pretty close to ours, just a little smaller and grayer, not silver.

<Yes, Prince Jake.>

<Don't call me 'Prince'.>

<Even as fish this stream is small,> Cassie commented. <We'll have to go in a straight line.>

<Better and better,> Marco commented. I got in the front, with the others behind me. Luckily we were swimming with the current so we didn't have to try very hard. It still took awhile to get to the mountain, though. We decided to start a conversation.

<So when we get to wherever we are going the basic plan is to just survey the area in some sort of morph or another and decide what to do from there,> Marco inquired. <right?>

<I guess,> Jake mumbled.

I knew what he was thinking. Yet another unprepared, totally uncontrollable plan that could be easily deadly. It's happened enough times: getting trapped in the truck ship, getting caught on the mother ship, nearly getting caught when trying to save that Farrand guy from being made into a Controller, nearly getting killed when retrieving that Pemalite crystal. Not to mention the Oatmeal Battle and the Fenestre mansion, our latest suicide attempts. We've been lucky so many times, it's a miracle. We had no way of knowing how this would go, though. No way.

<You know,> Marco commented, <You think maybe we'd win the lottery with all this luck we have.>

<Does anybody notice that?>

<What?>

<The current. It's getting faster.>

<Know that you mention it, I did notice it.>

The current was brushing against my scales a lot harder than when we had first started swimming.

<I think we may be getting close to the mountain.> Ax said.

Suddenly, I brutally scraped my belly-side from a rock from the bottom of the stream. The current was faster than ever, and the rocks in the stream were becoming more numerous. Suddenly, the world grew dark. I couldn't see any details with the blurry eyes of the trout, but I could definitely sense that we were approaching darker terrain. Suddenly…

<AAAHHHHHHH!!!!> Sudden waterfall! We tumbled and slid and seriously busted up those trout bodies going down it, but the ride wasn't over.

<WAAAAAAAHHHH!>

<THIIIIISSSSS IIIISSSS IIINNNSSANNNNE!!!!!!!!>

The stream had turned into cascades! Trout aren't made for rapids. They weren't handling them well, to say the least. Finally, the extreme speed began to decrease. We came to a stop.

<Whoah!> Marco cried gleefully. <That was too cool!>

<We need to demorph,> Ax commented calmly. <These fish bodies are not doing very well.>

<We have not the slightest idea where we are,> Cassie argued. <It could be dangerous.>

<No choice,> Jake said grimly. <Demorph.>

I gratefully resumed my real human body, and very suddenly I started to see where we were.

"Whoah!" I cried, almost fully demorphed. "This place is awsome! Look at the floors and walls! Too cool!"

We had found ourselves in this unbelievably gorgeous underground cave, lined with crystallized rock. The stream had turned into this little pool in the middle of it, and to the side where some very nice stalagmites and stalactites, the size myself. We were still marveling over the coolness of the cave when we heard several muffled noises. We ducked behind the life-size pillars of crystal and rock.

Suddenly, on the opposite side of the pool, a wall opened. Just opened. In walked two weary-looking Controllers, armed to the teeth. They casually walked over to our side of the cave, pressed what I had thought to be a mere bump in the wall, and part of that wall opened. They walked inside.

"That's it," I whispered to the others when the Controllers were gone. "Let's rock."

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